Genetic engineering is one of the fastest developing fields of science. It continues to impact our lives in many ways: the Green Revolution, the quest for perfect animal stock, disease treatment, or human reproduction. But success also has brought concerns. Plants have become insect resistant and also more toxic. Genetically engineered cattle produce more milk but have mutated and overgrown. When scientists opened the window for asexual human reproduction, life became a commodity that could be produced in a culture dish.

And it all started when a monk experimented with some sweet peas…

From Mendel to Dolly

Modern genetic engineering dates back to 1865, when the Austrian monk Gregor Mendel performed a series of experiments with sweet pea plants. These experiments led to changes in the plants’ genetic construction. Genetic engineering, also known as bioengineering or recombinant DNA technology, is a general term referring to any alteration of an organism’s genes in order to make them produce new substances or perform new functions.(1) During the following years, these little experiments developed into a new field. The genes of plants and small-sized organisms were altered through crossing, but other than that research was limited.

In the 1930s, industrial corporations like America’s Rockefeller Foundation or, 20 years later, Germany’s Volkswagen Group (VW), discovered a different approach to raise economic efficiency. At the same time, motives of social control and surveillance directed the Rockefeller Foundation’s interest in the human body to the individual and the collective levels.(2) The Rockefeller Foundation outlined its rationale for supporting genetic research as follows: For the last 100 years physics and chemistry have reigned supreme, and the question of human behavior had been neglected. The new goal was to accomplish social control through understanding and knowledge of the very basic elements of the human body.(3) With the promise of benefit for their own corporations, they started sponsoring this new subfield of biology. The National Institutes of Health, private corporations, institutes, and universities established research laboratories. The idea was that if more actors and institutions shared and exchanged knowledge, the more molecular biology’s narration of life would be consolidated, disseminated, and legitimized.(4) 

Soon discoveries were reported from the science frontier. In 1953, M. Wilkins, F. Crick, and J. Watson discovered DNA’s double helix model while working at the University of Cambridge in England. In 1962, they received the Nobel Prize for their discovery. In 1968 Nirenberg, Khorana and Holley received a Nobel Prize for their interpretation of the genetic code and its function in protein synthesis.(5) 

The first frogs were cloned in 1970. In other words, an artificial copy of their embryo was produced. Soon this fast developing field of biology turned into a new industrial sphere. In 1980, industrial biotechnology emerged after the Supreme Court case of Diamond vs. Chakrabarty. In this case, Chakrabarty engineered and wanted to patent a certain kind of organism. After his request was denied, he went to court and received a favorable ruling. This decision led to the establishment of copyrights for living organisms, which ultimately industrialized the field. Producing and patenting new organisms were two crucial factors in the biotech industry’s development. Consider Steen Willadsen, who cloned the first sheep in 1984 from an embryo.(6) One year later, he mass-produced prize cattle embryos for Grenada Genetics in order to raise a perfect stock.(7) However, that project soon was stopped because of the cloned cattle’s high and death rates and abnormal behavior.

Since the biologic make-up of many mammals had been unveiled, scientists now had a new goal: exploring the human being. Therefore the U.S. Department of Energy launched the human genome project. Soon biotech giants like Celera and many private institutions got into the race. Their goal was to map the entire human genome in order to identify and eliminate disease-causing genes. This project raised certain concerns about what would be done with an individual’s DNA information, who could access it (e.g., insurance companies and employers), and genetic discrimination.

The first human embryos were cloned in 1993. Four years, later the whole world got to meet Dolly, the first sheep cloned from an adult cell. This was an important development, for it opened the door to asexual reproduction. But despite the great enthusiasm with this achievement, some people started wondering about possible dangers. Finally in June 2000, Bill Clinton announced the completion of the human genone project.

Applications and drawbacks

Genetic engineering has penetrated into various parts of our life. Agriculture has seen a Green Revolution. Herbicide-resistant plants were engineered to have built-in pesticide resistance and to convert nitrogen directly from the soil. By April 2002, the approximately 50,000 rice genes had been discovered. Scientists already are working on ways to alter rice, the main food of the world’s population, so that it will be more nutritious and resistant. Insects are being engineered to attack crop predators. Researchers are growing agricultural products in the laboratory using genetically altered bacteria. A major commercial role for genetically engineered plants as chemical factories is also envisioned, such as organic plastics.

Some drawbacks of this revolution are increased toxins and diseases, which are causing the resulting organisms to become resistant to antibiotics. Increased toxins in plants were designed to make insect-resistant plants. Nuclear physicist Dr. John Hagerlin testified in Washington, DC, at the Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) public hearing that increased toxins trigger unanticipated allergic reactions. The resulting gene pollution threatens the environment, for it breaks down genetic barriers put in place by Nature.(8)

Industrial mistakes in production or insufficient research in engineered food ingredients also can cause serious problems. The Tryptophan food supplement, an amino acid marketed as a natural tranquilizer and sleeping pill, was mass-produced from genetically altered bacteria. It killed 37 persons and permanently disabled over 1,500 others with an incurable nervous system condition known as eosinophilia myalgia syndrome (EMS).(9) When these technologies were applied to livestock, farmers first were pleased that the engineered cattle produced more milk, grew faster, and yielded more meat. However, cases of mutation and rampant overgrowth have caused scientists to reevaluate the effectiveness of these procedures.

Another important issue is inserting human genes in animals. What percent of human genes does an organism have to contain before it is considered human? If humans have a special ethical status, does the presence of human genes in an organism change its ethical status? What about a genetically engineered mouse that produces a human sperm that is then used to conceive a human child?(10) Or a pig that contains human genes in order to grow organs that can be transplanted to humans?(11)

It is shocking that the FDA issued guidelines in September 1996 that allow animal-to-human transplants, even though a group of 44 top virologists, primate researchers, and AIDS specialists, opposed it. They attacked the FDA guidelines, saying that based on knowledge of past cross-species transmissions (e.g., AIDS, Herpes B, Ebola, and other viruses), using animals was not adequately justified for use in a handful of patients. Vast numbers of people could be injured or even killed if a new infectious agent were to be transmitted.(12) The FDA puts the responsibility for health and safety on local hospitals and medical review boards.

Recombinant DNA technology also has been applied directly to the human body. After mapping the entire genome, scientists discovered some disease-causing genes. They are now working to isolate those genes and develop molecular-level treatments. Although curing Alzheimers, nuscular dystrophy, and many other inherited diseases would make patients happy, unexpected results may occur. When applying gene therapy, a one-to-one correspondence between the gene and its function is assumed. Since genes interact in a horizontal manner, as scientists have shown, introducing a new gene could have unforeseen effects.(13)

Genetic manipulation in human beings always encompasses the possibility of designer genes that manipulate a child’s appearance, IQ, or behavior. According to a March of Dimes survey, 40 percent of Americans would use gene therapy to enhance their children’s looks or intelligence. Even picking your child’s gender has become a question of money. A Fairfax, Virginia-based genetics and in-vitro fertilization institute offers family balancing for approximately $3,000. Known as microsort, the male sperm is separated from the female one. In 2001, the institute treated around 60 couples a month and planned to double its production. Fortune Magazine calculated that the microsort market could be worth $200 million.(14)

There is also talk that people could be exploited as producers of certain substances. For example, a biotech corporation applied to the European Patent Office for a patent on a so-called pharm woman. The idea was to genetically alter women so that their breast milk would contain specialized pharmaceuticals.(15)

Related debates

There are many other largely debated topics in this field, but the most controversial one of all is human cloning life. This is divided into therapeutic cloning and reproductive cloning.

In therapeutic cloning, scientists produce embryos in culture dishes to harvest their stem cells. These then are used in further research, the long-term goal of which is to produce replacement organisms. Stem cells are undifferentiated and primitive cells that can be found in embryos as well as in an adult body.(16) Researchers intend to isolate stem cells so they can serve as a starter stock for growing replacement nerve, muscle and other tissue that might one day be used to treat patients with various diseases.(17) Even though this procedure sounds very promising, we should not overlook the fact that embryos are mass-produced to harvest stem cells. Once these have been isolated, the embryo becomes useless and disposable. The ethics of this procedure are questionable, since stem cells also could be harvested from an adult human body.

Reproductive cloning intends to implant such a cloned embryo into a woman’s uterus. Although this procedure is not safe for either the mother or the child, Severino Antinori announced that he and his team will soon produce the first cloned child. The Whitehead Institute of Biomedical Research revealed that cloned mice possess subtle genetic defects that could eventually wreak havoc on the animals system. This means that even though a cloned child might appear completely normal at birth, it has to expect serious health problems later in life.(18)

There also are potential psychological risks for a cloned child. Dr. Thomas Murray worries about the child’s self-identity problem once he/she finds out that he/she is a clone and how he/she was conceived.(19) George Johnson, a professor at Washington University, opposes cloning because genetic variation is the chief defense our species has against an uncertain future. If we strip ourselves of it even partially, it is to endanger our species.

Conclusion

Recombinant DNA technology faces our society with problems unique not only in the history of science but also life on the Earth as well as legal approaches towards them. It places in human hands the capacity to redesign living organisms. It presents probably the largest ethical problem science has ever had to face. Our morality up to now has been to go ahead without restrictions to learn what we can about nature. Reconstructing nature was not part of the bargain. Going ahead in this direction may not be only unwise but also dangerous. Potentially it could breed new animal and plant diseases, new sources of cancer and novel epidemics.(20)

Since creation is in a perfect balance, interventions might have unforeseen effects. A book must be written by an author, a picture must be painted by an artist, and a poem must be written by a poet. Each piece of art has an artist who has an encompassing knowledge of his/her creation. If we do not understand that nature is a perfectly composed book, our writings will be no more than scribbles between the lines.

Footnotes

1. http://209.52.56.28/lexicon/g.html.
2. Lily E. Kay, The Molecular Vision of Life: Caltech, the Rockefeller Foundation, and the Rise of the New Biology (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993), 26.
3. Herbert Gottweiss, Governing Molecules: The Discursive Politics of Genetic Engineering in Europe and the US (Cambridge MA: The MIT Press, 1998), 42.
4. Ibid., 46.
5. www.nobel.se/medicine/laureates/1968/index.html.
6. www.dartmouth.edu/artsci/courses/coco25/Cloning/The_History_of_Cloning.html.
7. http://library.thinkquest.org/24355/data/details/1985.html?tqskip1=1&tqtime=0508.
8. www.netlink.de/gen/hagelin.html.
9. www.psrast.org/jftrypt.htm.
10. Surrogate Fathers, New Scientist (31 Jan. 1998).
11. Robert Pool, Saviors, Discover, (May 1998): 53-57. (special issue.)
12. IP/BiodivNews, 1-24-97 or http://online.sfsu.edu/~rone/GE%20Essays/Redigning.htm#40.
13. Horizontal gene transfer refers to the transfer of genes to unrelated species by infection through viruses, through pieces of genetic material, DNA by being taken up into cells from the environment, or by unusual mating taking place between unrelated species. (Mae-Wan Ho, Genetic Engineering: Dream or Nightmare, 2d rev. [Continuum Pub Group: 2000),
14. The Economist (14 Apr. 2001): 22.
15. Andrew Kimbrell, The Human Body Shop: The Engineering and Marketing of Life (New York: Harper Collins, 1994), 191.
16. Popular Science (Jan. 2002): 58.
17. Scientific American (Jan. 2002): 45.
18. Gunjan Sinha, Popular Science (Jan. 2002)
19. Thomas Murray, Talk of the Nation broadcast, 24 Feb. 1997.
20. George Wald, The Case Against Genetic Engineering, in The Recombinant DNA Debate, eds. David A. Jackson and Stephen P. Stich (Prentice Hall College Div: 1979), 127-28.

Historical background

Dhimmi designates an indefinitely renewed contract through which non-Muslims have a specific status (but are not full citizens), have their property protected, and are ensured safe conduct in return for acknowledging Islam’s domination and paying the jizya (poll tax).(3) In early Islam, they were Christians, Jews, Magians, Samaritans, and Sabians.(4) The Prophet and the early caliphs showed religious tolerance and caution toward religious minorities.(5) The Ottoman sultans made slight changes, but basically followed the same attitude in a more structured fashion.

Dhimmis in the Ottoman State

Some assert that Ottoman society was divided into ruling (Muslim) and (non-Muslim) raaya classes. But it was more complicated than that, for Muslims and non-Muslims were referred to as raaya (followers, the ruled, or non-participants in government). As the Ottoman State was semi-theocratic, raaya should be understood in the biblical sense as the shepherd and the flock.(6)

Government personnel worked in three areas: religion and law, war and statecraft, and the bureaucracy. The first branch was restricted to Muslim-born subjects. The ulema devoted long years to theological, scholastic, and legal studies in order to become judges and professors. The latter two branches were reserved mainly for non-Muslims. Neither group was inferior to the Muslims.

The Ottoman system was so complex that we cannot determine whether there was religious or racial discrimination. After reforms during the nineteenth century, many intellectuals and ecclesiastics argued that applying a unified law would deprive them of their privileges.(7) The Ottoman system of government was holistic, considered all branches interwoven and interconnected, and was fairly well integrated, in socioeconomic matters but not in religious matters, at least in Turkish-majority areas.

The Millet System

Three days after Sultan Mehmed the Conqueror entered Constantinople (1453), he told everyone to go home and continue his or her occupation and religion. He supervised the election of a new Greek Patriarch, a monk named Genadius, who was elected by Synod and consecrated. He proclaimed the patriarch-elect in the most honorific terms, gave him the pastoral staff with his own hands, and said: Be patriarch, live with us in peace, and enjoy all the privileges of your predecessors.(8) Though other communities later were recognized in the same terms, the Greek Orthodox Church always had more privileges and stronger ties with the central government.

Gradually, dealing with minorities engendered the millet system. Controlling the minority communities through their local bishops and rabbis stopped, and the whole Orthodox Church was organized as Rum Milleti (Roman people). The patriarch collected and allocated the poll tax and served as his community’s temporal leader. He was assigned a ceremonial rank with three tugs (horsetails), allowed his own court and prison in Istanbul’s Fener district, and had unlimited civil jurisdiction over and responsibility for his community. The State assigned him other duties and enforced the laws that he laid down for his community.

Since Islamic law is corporate (not territorial) and Ottoman society was corporate in nature, the Ottoman State dealt with dhimmis as members of a community and not as individuals.(9) A community member was directly responsible for and accountable to the community. Thus the government protected the communities from internal and external aggression, while the community’s leaders managed its affairs. The Porte had to ratify the chosen leader, but this was a mere formality. Each millet’s leader represented his people, and these matters were dealt with through the Foreign Ministry. The Greek Orthodox Patriarch had the rank of vizier and was provided with a guard of Janissaries (soldiers).

The Christian Millet. Most Orthodox Christian Balkan territories had been included in the Patriarchate of Constantinople’s jurisdiction. But by the time of Ottoman conquest, the Slavonic branch in the Sultan’s dominion had split into three patriarchates: Ochrida, Trnovo, and Ipek. These divisions were racial, dynastic, and nationalistic, and not doctrinal. Thus the Conqueror placed all Orthodox Christians under the authority of the Ecumenical Patriarch in Constantinople and let him decide how to apportion the tax among them.

The sixteenth-century conquests in the Islamic lands and the capture of Cyprus and Crete brought many Orthodox Christians and the ancient patriarchates of Jerusalem, Antioch, and Alexandria under Muslim control. As the patriarch was influential with the sultan, the Porte made arrangements through which the Greek elements became dominant.(10)

The Jewish Millet. The Conqueror allowed the Jews, recognized as another millet, to settle in Istanbul. He appointed a haham basi (Chief Rabbi) with powers similar to those enjoyed by the patriarch. The haham basi was given precedence over the patriarch next to the head of ulema, and after the conquest, the Jews’ position improved. Although outcasts under the Byzantines, they now started holding various public offices.(11) Jews fleeing persecution in Spain and elsewhere were welcomed into Ottoman lands.

Each minority community was treated according to how it had been incorporated into the Ottoman State. Under Bayezid II and Mehmed the Conqueror, Muslims seem to have favored Jews over Christians, since Christians were suspected of being too sympathetic to Christian Europe. The Jews had no central authority to follow and be instigated by, save that of the office of haham basi, which the Porte could check easily. Almost all Jews were immigrants and brought their distinctive rituals, habits, and customs with them, Therefore, different regions inhabited by homogeneous groups were represented by different synagogues.

The Armenian Millet. In 1462, the Armenians became the last community recognized as a separate millet until the period of decline. Whereas the Patriarch was the most prominent ecclesiastical figure in the Orthodox Church and the Jews had no spiritual universal director, the head of Armenian Church did not reside within the Empire.

The Orthodox Church considered the Armenian church (Gregorian) heretical. Earlier, it had been as powerful as Orthodoxy. When the Armenians became a separate millet, neither little Armenia nor the Armenian provinces of the East, two important seats, were ruled by the Ottomans. Therefore, Mehmed II chose Horaghim, Gregorian bishop of Bursa, as the Armenian patriarch of Istanbul and gave him powers similar to those of the Orthodox patriarch and the haham basi.

Also belonging to this millet were all unclassified subjects, such as the Bogomils and the Paulicans, two heretical sects that originated from the Armenian church. Most Balkan Armenians accepted Islam after the area was overrun by the Ottoman armies. Remaining subjects have retained their particular faith until today. Other members included various Catholic and other Christian groups that the Orthodox Church considered heretical.

The devshirme and ghulam systems

This devshirme system was based on traditional views of dealing with prisoners of war. In the classical Islamic period, jurists advised immediate execution, allowing some or all to be ransomed or freed, exchanges for Muslim prisoners, or enslavement.(12)

Islam allowed slaves to be emancipated; the Ottomans did not. One-fifth of all captives entered the ghulam system (the sultan’s slave family), and were trained and allowed to rise within the system. Such slaves were recruited from Christians aged 10 to 20 years. The preferred ages were probably between 14 and 18, and boys younger than 12 or older than 20 were considered only in exceptional cases.(13)

Recruits were obtained through capture, purchase, gift, or tribute. Slaves not bought for the sultan or given to him were usually either captives or levied with the tribute boys. There was hardly any other way, since slaves passed too rapidly into the Muslim fold to have their children available for the system. The sons of the recruits (though already themselves Muslim) were eligible, but not their grandsons, because by then the grandchildren would most likely be Muslims. Reliable statistical data is rare, but based on contemporary ac-counts, in the sixteenth century probably 3,000 children were recruited annually. Those within the system might have reached as high as 80,000, and the total number recruited throughout the centuries might have been close to 2 million.

This exclusion of all other Muslims’ children and grandchildren lasted until Suleyman the Magnificent broke them. He allowed the Janissaries’ children to join their ranks or other parts of the system. This proved to be a fatal move, for it became the only hereditary institution after the sultanate.

At first, parents were anxious to keep their children out of the system. But later on, even Muslim families tried to get their children into it because of the prestige it conferred. Originally restricted to the sons of villagers and poor families, it eventually spread to the townsmen’s children. The earlier practice resulted in great social upward mobility; the later practice opened up a new way of accumulating wealth and prestige, and thus undermined the State.

This tribute system brought children from Austria, the Caucasus, the Crimea, and the Balkans. Those captured by raiders and corsairs were presented to the sultan as gifts. Otherwise, recruiting officers visited some villages every 4 years to fill their quota. The officer summoned the priest and got a list of children, visited the houses, and took the most suitable children. If he received more than required, the surplus was sold elsewhere.(14) Contemporary accounts say that it produced the ablest and most talented children.

These children became known as ghilman. The sultan had the absolute sovereignty over them. However, they felt honored by this title and tried to show their loyalty to him. The Ottoman system raised slaves to ministers of state, courtiers, husbands of princesses, rulers of the Islamic state, soldiers and generals, bureaucrats and prime ministers. Race was irrelevant, for only potential talent was considered.(15)

They were taught Turkish, Arabic, Persian, physical training, war affairs, administration, the Ottoman governing institutions, and so on. The successful and meritorious could expect to serve in some of the Empire’s highest positions. Its graduates became fully Muslim, as did those who served in the Ottoman armed forces. However, many non-Muslims served in respectable positions during the reigns of Murad II, Mehmed the Conqueror, and Salim I. Muslims and non-Muslims held provincial administration positions and were members of court slave families (e.g., the grand vizier, governors, princes, military officers, and so on).

Taxation

Dhimmis paid two special taxes: jizya (a tribute or a poll tax) and kharaj (land tax). Ottoman ulema ruled that this rule still was in use, but since all agricultural land belonged to the State, it applied to private holdings. Another tax was taken from all peasants. Many other dues levied on peasants and traders were heavier for dhimmis than for Muslims. Though the land tax was discontinued during the early days of Islam, the Ottomans continued to levy the poll tax in lieu of military service.(16) Interestingly enough, it was confused with land tax and the dhimmis were confused with the masses. The masses’ payment of the land tax thus was actually the dhimmis’ payment of the poll tax.(17)

Originally it was levied only on free men who could earn and afford to pay it. But later on, ministers, rabbinical representatives, the chief rabbi, teachers, slaughterers, and a few Jewish families in Istanbul were excluded. Many Christian families obtained a decree from the sultan that made them exempt. Gibb and Bowen estimate that probably only one-third of all eligible dhimmis paid this tax during the State’s later period.(18)

During the nineteenth century, the land tax was abolished (in principle) and yet retained as a compensation for military duty. Shortly thereafter, Istanbul’s people were exempted from it in toto, although it was still collected in the provinces. Until the republican era, all non-Muslims (except for Istanbul residents) paid only a military and a road tax.

Conclusion

The Ottoman State acted according to Islam and its own interests. It recognized each community’s rights and frequently protected them at the expense of its own citizens. It opened up state offices to non-Muslims as an incentive to become Muslim. Such a policy was unknown to the Europe of that time. However, the Ottomans did not spread the Islamic educational system among the non-Muslims to encourage their conversion, which constituted the state’s very raison d’etre.

Footnotes

1. Abu Jaber, book title/pub. info needed, 213.
2. H.A.R. Gibb and Harold Bowen, Islamic Society and the West (London and New York: Oxford University Press, 1950-), 1:43.
3. H.A.R. Gibb et al., eds., Encyclopedia of Islam, Dhimma (Leiden: Brill, 1960-).
4. M. Khadduri, War and Peace in the Law of Islam (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1955), 176-77.
5. Ibid., 173.
6. Abu Jaber, 212.
7. Carel Bertram, book title/pub. info needed, 127.
8. Ibid.
9. Stanford J. Shaw and Ezel K. Shaw, History of the Ottoman Empire and Modern Turkey (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1976-77), 1:151.
10. Ibid., 153.
11. Cyrus Adler et al., eds., The Jewish Encyclopedia, Turkey (New York and London: Funk & Wagnalls, 1901-06).
12. A. H. Lybyer, The Government of the Ottoman Empire in the Time of Suleiman the Magnificent (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1913).
13. Ibid., 54.
14. Ibid., 46.
15. Vernon Parry, Elite Elements in the Ottoman Empire, in Governing Elites: Studies in Training and Selection, ed. Rupert Wilkinson (New York: Oxford University Press, 1969), 50-73.
16. Gibb and Bowen, Islamic Society, 253.
17. The Jewish Encyclopedia, Turkey.
18. Gibb and Bowen, Islamic Society, 255.

Although, there is a lack of theoretical and philosophical background to understand the homeschooling movement I would like to use some philosophy of

teaching theories to understand and analyze counter-culture and controversies in Mitchell L. Stevens’ book. The author tries to offer a broad understanding in the North Eastern American states in the homeschooling movement. The author focuses to answer why the homeschooling families walked away from one of the most central institutions of modern life and what do those families think about conventional schools. Stevens continues by saying that We inherit traditions of meaning that help define what we think and lend words to what we fell. I wanted to learn about the intellectual traditions from which home schooling had grown (Stevens, 2001, p.15). When I reviewed the book I wanted to discover what kind of inherited tradition and mentality he found or didn’t find in the book while I was writing this paper. The author’s perspective about the homeschooling movement seems to be more narrative and insightful than theoretical and philosophical, which a sociological study is supposed to rely on.

On the cover of the book Stevens talks about the great successes of home schooled children, their making headlines by winning national spelling bees and excelling at elite universities, but he does not extend the argument far enough. He does not talk about the experiences of these children, their feelings and ideas about being home schooled, or the structure of their educational curriculum. Although he mentions some studies about those children by saying that home schooled children are academically successful and remarkably well socialized he does not explain how and why homeschooling brings these results. This shows that Stevens is more concerned with the adult movement in homeschooling than with how it will affect the children’s world contrary to the title of the book.

While the book states that the vast majority of homeschooling parents were conservative Christian or evangelical Protestant there are some exceptions to that which make the movement harder to understand. These exceptions include families who are atheist, gay or single parent rather than all conservative Christian. I see a shift toward theories based on a postmodern approach because many parents have become skeptical about other types of modern schooling. Homeschooling families place great emphasis on their children’ showing initiative and being physically and psychologically healthy. For homeschooling families’ modernism does not have a capacity to fulfill the needs of young children because there is so much influence of commercial culture, including overly sexualized and secularized materials. While homeschooling families unmask the secular political ideology in regular public schooling, they come with their hidden agenda (religious or non-secular education) unlike in postmodernism. This is because postmodernism gives great emphasis on individual intention. Hlebowitsh says that postmodernists stress the value of individual initiative, the recognition of human intention, the unmasking of political ideology in knowledge, the taming of social control mechanism in the school, and the general idea that society is marked by conflicting interests of class, gender, and culture (Hlebowitsh, 2001, p. 119). Postmodernism is skeptical to see things as all good and perfect, but homeschooling families are pretty sure what they want out of home schooling. According to many homeschooling families, in this modern world individuals are not conscious about God and the importance of family ties, especially mother and child/children, are uniquely important. Consequently, the movement in the book seems to be not so new and very similar to early colonial New England School tradition in terms of its being exclusive and based on Bible lesson plans. In chapter three, entitled Natural Mothers and Godly Women, Stevens recalls Dame schooling that is based on women educators (widowed or unmarried) in the New England early colonial era. These women did not necessarily train to be a teacher but taught to read the Bible and lessons based on its Scriptures, which is very similar to the homeschooling movement today. Stevens book fails to do this, or describe some other types of historical ties behind the movement. I wonder if he intents to make this connection on page 15 by using the term inherit tradition in the homeschooling movement.

In the Homeschooling Journal, Debra Strayer (Stevens, 2001, p.66) says that:

As teaching parents, we are presented with a huge array of educationally important things to serve our children. Many things are considered essential, such as phonics and math. Many are deemed very important, such as writing and science, with our study of the Bible as the central diet. As we consider the many things our children simply must have, we tend to eliminate those things that are cumbersome and difficult to schedule

In this quote Strayer expresses the feelings of many homeschooling families by saying that other types of schooling are more heavily weighted on unnecessary courses and scheduling than core subjects’ courses. The homeschooling families like to eliminate those things from their children’s learning experience. While they make these arguments on the surface they tend to be subject-centered rather than child-centered. This is similar to one of the conservative philosophies of teaching theory, which is essentialism. In this type of teaching philosophy learning is primarily based on the transmission and protection of common core cultural knowledge. This common culture relies on the values of Western civilization and the ideal learning experience is strictly based on academic discipline. While those statements translate the homeschooling movement, the author does not tend to make any type of historical or philosophical connection to interpret and understand the movement. Because these parents do not count on their children’s ideas and feelings, they ignore the real view of their children and they only think of molding them into the shape that they want them to be. Thus, parents, not the children, have the authority to make the choices and offer selections.

According to Rousseau, who is the father of the child-centered approach, children are best educated in a free environment and schools tend to destroy the natural learning process. Having an educational agenda undermines the individual’s natural and spontaneous learning process. As is seen in this statement, what Rousseau proposed with child-centeredness was totally different than what homeschooling families intend to do. I think the author needs another term instead of child centered at page 88. I believe those children are successful because of subject or discipline centeredness of homeschooling movement but not because of the child-centeredness of the movement.

Although I find Stevens book very enlightening, I see some gaps in terms of its theoretical and philosophical background. The author perceives homeschooling as a new social movement, but the question about what type of new social movement stays unclear and/or unanswered. I also realize this gap comes from the nature of the homeschooling movement. Even though, I try to understand Stevens’ book based on some teaching theories, it is hard to frame the movement because of a wide range of homeschooling families’ backgrounds and their expectations from the movement. Stevens’ book offers a very insightful approach to understanding homeschooling families. One of the strongest sides of his book is its vast range of homeschooling designs and the richness of his survey sample distributions. In terms of his methodology, this increases the accuracy of the information he provides through surveying. This shows that the author reached out to many homeschooling families and learned a lot about their world. Finally, I find Stevens successful in his ability to reflect his experiences insightfully with homeschooling families behind the movement.

References

• Hlebowitsh, Peter S., (2001). Foundations of American education (3 ed.). Wadsworth T. Thomson Learning. Belmont, CA
• Stevens, Mitchell L., (2001). Kingdom of children: Culture and controversy in the homeschooling movement. Princeton University Press. Princeton, New Jersey

A: The sparrow hawk’s swooping contributes to the sparrow’s alertness and evolving skills of escape. Although rain, electricity, or fire sometimes harms people, no one curses them. Fasting may be difficult, but it provides the body with energy, activity, and resistance. A child’s immune system usually gains strength through illness. Gymnastics are not easy, but they are almost essential to bodily health and strength. People’s spirits are refined through worship and meditation as well as through illness, suffering, and hardship. These allow them to acquire Paradise, for God gives a large reward for a little sacrifice. Hardships and sufferings promote people to higher spiritual degrees, and will be returned manifold in the other world. This is why all Messengers experienced the most grievous hardships and sufferings.

Hardship, suffering, and calamity cause believers’ sins to be forgiven, warn them away from sins and the seductions of Satan and the carnal self, help them appreciate God’s blessings, and open the way to gratitude. Also, they urge the rich and healthy to be concerned about the ill and the poor and to help them. Those who have never suffered cannot understand the condition of those who are hungry, sick, or stricken with a calamity. In addition, these afflictions may help establish closer relations between different social sectors.

Q: What is the role of intention in fasting?

A: Intention has a prominent place in our actions, for the Messenger told us that our actions are judged according to our intentions. Intention is the spirit of our actions, for without it there is no reward. If you remain hungry and thirsty from daybreak to sunset without intending to fast, Allah does not consider it a fast. If you fast without intending to obtain God’s good pleasure, you receive no reward. So whatever one intends, one gets the reward thereof.

Those who have a firm belief in God, the other pillars of faith, and the intention to believe in them will be rewarded with eternal felicity in Paradise. But those who are determined not to believe, who have removed the inborn tendency to believe from their hearts, will be victims of their eternal determination and deserve eternal punishment. As for those with deeply ingrained unbelief and who have lost the capacity to believe, we read in the Qur’an: As for the unbelievers, it is the same whether you warn them or warn them not. They will not believe. God has set a seal on their hearts and on their hearing, and on their eyes there is a covering (2:6-7).

Q: What about those who say that fasting for so long is unhealthy or affects one’s job performance or even the nation’s development?

A: Human life is a composite of two distinct powers: the spirit and the flesh. Although they sometimes act in harmony, conflict is more usual “ conflict in which one defeats the other. If bodily lusts are indulged, the spirit grows more powerless as it becomes more obedient to those lusts. If one can control the desires of the flesh, place the heart (the seat of spiritual intellect) over reason, and oppose bodily lusts, he or she acquires eternity.

Compared with previous centuries, people may well be wealthier and enjoy more convenience and comfort. However, they are trapped in greed, infatuation, addiction, need, and fantasy much more than ever before. The more they gratify their animal appetites, the more crazed they become to gratify those appetites; the more they drink, the thirstier they get; the more they eat, the hungrier they get. They enter into evil speculations to feed their greed to earn still more, and sell their spirits to Satan for the most banal advantages. And so they break with true human values a little more each day.

To sacrifice one’s enjoyment of worldly pleasures has the same significance for human progress as roots have for a tree’s growth. Just as a tree grows sound and strong in direct relation to its roots’ soundness and strength, people grow to perfection whose striving to free themselves from selfishness so that they can live for others. 

Q: What spiritual practices and outlooks should one make a special effort to acquire during Ramadan?

A: Muhasaba (Self-Criticism or Self-Interrogation): Self-criticism may be described as seeking and discovering one’s inner and spiritual depth, and exerting the necessary spiritual and intellectual effort to acquire true human values and to develop the sentiments that encourage and nourish them. This is how one distinguishes between good and bad, beneficial and harmful, and how one maintains an upright heart. Furthermore, it enables a believer to evaluate the present and prepare for the future. Again, self-criticism enables a believer to make amends for past mistakes and be absolved in the sight of God, for it provides a constant realization of self-renewal in one’s inner world. Such a condition enables one to achieve a steady relationship with God, for this relationship depends on a believer’s ability to live a spiritual life and remain aware of what takes place in his or her inner world. Success results in the preservation of one’s celestial nature as a true human being, as well as the continual regeneration of one’s inner senses and feelings.

Tafakkur (Reflection):Reflection is a vital step in becoming aware of what is going on around us and of drawing conclusions from it. It is a golden key to open the door of experience, a seedbed where the trees of truth are planted, and the opening of the pupil of the heart’s eye. Due to this, the greatest representative of humanity, the foremost in reflection and all other virtues, upon him be peace and blessings, states: No act of worship is as meritorious as reflection. So reflect on God’s bounties and the works of His Power, but do not try to reflect on His Essence, for you will never be able to do that. By these words, in addition to pointing out the merit of reflection, the glory of mankind, upon him be peace and blessings, determines the limits of reflection and reminds us of our limits.

Shukr (Thankfulness): True thankfulness in one’s heart is manifested through the conviction and acknowledgment that all bounties are from God, and then ordering one’s life accordingly. One can thank God verbally and through one’s daily life only if personally convinced, and if one willingly acknowledges that his or her existence, life, body, physical appearance, and all abilities and accomplishments are from God, as are all of the bounties obtained and consumed. This is stated in: Do you not see that God has made serviceable unto you whatsoever is in the skies and whatsoever is in the earth, and has loaded you with His bounties seen or unseen? (31:20), and: He gives you of all that you ask Him; and if you reckon the bounties of God, you can never count them (14:34).

Of course, one should try to increase in all virtues during Ramadan, as this is the best time of year to do so.

Increasing brainpower

We can improve our brain’s memory, creativity, and intelligence by our own conscious effort and free will. Even though our brain is made of nerve tissues, it can grow if it is used, just like a muscle. Scientists are constantly amazed at its plasticity “ the ability to grow. Even for people over 80 years old, significant life-quality improvements can be achieved through intellectual activity.

Researchers at the University of California-Los Angeles studied the brains of 20 dead people. After examining the dendrites (tree-like communicating arms between muscles), they discovered that their length increased proportionally with a person’s education and lifestyle. Those with a college education and a mentally active lifestyle had longer dendrites than those with less education and an intellectually inactive lifestyle.

Animal studies seem to confirm the same result. For example, rats exposed to maze learning show an increase in dendrite growth and enhanced problem-solving ability. They form new synapses between neurons, which facilitates further learning. When they are moved to dull, non-challenging environments, dendritic material decreases and synapses regress. Neurons can grow and change throughout one’s life.

French philosopher and mathematician Rene Descartes (1596-1650) once said: It is not enough to have a good mind. The main thing is to use it well.(1) In this ever-changing information society, successful adaptation depends on expanding our minds through learning and creativity. Knowledge helps us advance to happiness, because happiness usually is tied to less stress (in our career or daily life), gives us greater travel and leisure opportunities, more autonomy and even more money. Love grows in a relaxed and happy atmosphere, so even emotional well-being depends on improving our brainpower.

By stimulating our brain more intensively, a curious thing happens: The inter-connections between neurons increase by developing new dendrites. These surplus connections make our brain work better, improve our memory, and protect us against diseases like Alzheimer’s by providing alternative connections.

Learning and brainpower

An increased sense of self-confidence and awareness originates from a large fund of knowledge. Even the number and variety of friends we have is directly proportional to the number of topics of interest and discussion we acquire. Knowledge also improves our ability to foresee future political, economic, and historical trends. Moreover, an improved understanding of history and cultures help us avoid the hazard of prejudice.

Understanding the world is like a jigsaw puzzle. The more pieces that we can fit in, the clearer the image and the greater the urge to learn and fill in more pieces. The more we learn, the more we wish to continue learning. Increasing knowledge is like an avalanche; for it gains a momentum of its own once it starts. Perseverance and some initial prompting are required, but the rewards soon pay off. Minds are kept young by continual use, and mentally active people tend to live longer. Learning is as important to our brain as exercise is to our body. Hence the process of learning should not cease right after graduating from high school or college.

Students are presented with an enormous amount of information to learn and memorize during the academic year. During vacation time, however, they shy away from reading or learning even about non-curricular topics because of the mistaken notion that the brain has a limited capacity and that new information will overwrite previous information. The brain has a virtually unlimited capacity to absorb, sort, and retain information. But stimulation is required. An athlete improves by exercise and training; the brain gets into shape the more it is used.

According to Life magazine’s July 1994 feature article on Brain Calisthenics, Golden claims that exercising your brain may do as much for your health as exercising your body. Research on an elderly group of nuns in Minnesota revealed that a daily diet of brain games kept them healthy, youthful, and relatively free from Alzheimer’s and other degenerative brain disorders. And, they were happy, active, and mentally sharp well into their nineties. Researchers attribute this to the brain’s capacity to grow new connections after receiving the proper kind of stimulation. Although the connection between continued brain activity and health remains unclear, we can say that neural stimulation seems to have a direct role in keeping the brain and body balanced, energetic, and healthy. And, it is surmised that increased brain stimulation provides more pronounced and long-lasting benefits.

We can increase our dendrites by engaging in newer activities. When we learn something, we use our whole brain and build new brain circuits. But once something becomes a routine, we only use a small portion of our brain, leaving the rest to atrophy. To prevent the loss or actually to increase the number of dendrites, they must be stimulated. In a Life magazine interview published in July 1994, Arnold Scheible, head of UCLA’s Brain Research Institute, suggested: The important thing is to be actively involved in areas that are unfamiliar to you. Anything that’s intellectually challenging can probably serve as a kind of stimulus for dendritic growth, which means it adds to the computational reserves in your brain.

However, the article pointed out a caveat for the occasional brain developer. It seems that although learning a new skill creates more neural dendritic connections, the growth stops once the skill is learned and the new connections may actually atrophy. Thus, the brain needs random and interactive exercise so that it cannot learn the exercise so well that it becomes a routine and so that it can better learn new things continually.

Learning is an art that requires practical tools to gather a broad knowledge base. For example, Dr. S. Ray has an interesting suggestion: Look up unfamiliar words in the dictionary and then write a reminder by the word indicating where you encountered it, whet-her in a book, a newspaper, or a conversation. If you saw it in Newsweek, write NW beside the word. If your professor mentioned it, write his name next to the word. If you come across a word in this article, put a smiling face near it. Next time you encounter this word, your previous annotation will help you form a better association and you will remember the word better.

Once you start learning new words, it is a pleasant surprise to encounter them again. Each new word becomes a personal friend that reinforces a memory. Consider the dictionary one of your most interesting friends. The more words we learn, the more we become aware of our surroundings. Words enrich our memory. Words form the thread on which we string our experiences, said the British philosopher Aldous Huxley (1894-1963).

Physical activity and brainpower

Physical activity increases mental function. Exercise induces the growth of capillaries (tiny blood vessels) in the brain. Aging can lead to the brain receiving less blood. Exercise throughout life works against the decreased mental functioning associated with old age. Yet, one must not overemphasize physical exercise.

In their book Healthy Pleasures, Ornstein (a psychologist) and Sobel (a physician) argue that our current health practices should be shifted toward a more intellectual approach. They claim that diets and physical exercises can punish and even harm the body, and that they might have side-effects and only a limited effectiveness. They opine that some of the rigorous body controls we tend to practice are more linked to the Protestant work ethic than real health benefits. Hence going to the gym is a work-out.

Stress and brainpower

One side-effect of stress is dullness in the brain. Therefore, whatever removes stress increases brainpower. There are several relatively new methods to improve brainpower (intelligence, creativity, learning ability). For example, listening to a precise combination of audio signals embedded on a cassette or CD beneath soothing music and environmental sounds can give the brain a very specific audio stimulus that gently creates deep meditation, removes stress, and creates emotional healing at a deep level. This causes new connections to be created in the brain.

This is accompanied by a deep, trance-like meditative state in which the brain produces a whole host of pleasurable neurochemicals, such as endorphins. Such a trance or meditation can be attained easily during deep and concentrated prayer. A soothing and relaxing atmosphere can be achieved during chanting, remembrance, or reciting holy texts and hymns.

The new pathways caused by these meditative states connect and synchronize the brain’s hemispheres, thereby causing whole brain functioning. The improvements in brainpower include learning, intuition, mental clarity, creativity, focus and concentration, and intelligence. This research is backed by Centerpointe Institute, which has a commercial product (Holosync) based on the above principle.

Stress also is tied to the burdens we are obliged to carry. Usually we think that we control our lives entirely and thus can control everything around us. As this is not even near the truth, the resulting condition is stress accompanied by depression. Again, a fine balance between faith in destiny and free will help us remove this stress and live an alleviated and spiritually relieved life. Said Nursi analyzes this concept in his Twenty-sixth Word.(2)

In addition to removing stress, the nervous system’s reorganization of itself to a new and higher level increases the stress threshold. At that point, many uncomfortable, dysfunctional feelings and behaviors go away, even if they might have been persistent until then. This is a deep and dramatic change in mental health: the release of anger, fear, and sadness, as well as the release of self-defeating behaviors, childhood traumas, and limiting decisions. Once these are gone, we can expect better relationships to emerge.

Thus it is like a virtuous cycle, because people who reach higher levels want to move to deeper meditation levels, just as athletes increase their mileage after mastering a certain distance. In these in-creased levels, the mind expands, grows, and becomes self-aware to a greater extent. Perhaps it also experiences a deeper meditative experience.

Health and brainpower

Adding years to your life and life to your years have always been challenging. The first one has been achieved for some, as life expectancy in developed countries increased by 30 years during the twentieth century due to improved food supply, housing, medicine, and many other factors. However, research in the last few decades proves that one can become even smarter by dendrite generation. At first, researchers told us that life-long physical training was one way to keep in good health. Now, since scientists know that the brain can be developed and enlarged, brain calisthenics have become even more important. The age-old dilemma of mind over matter has been resolved in favor of the mind.

A group of researchers has demonstrated that pleasure and positive states of mind are better for our health. This new intellectual approach to health is not only more powerful, but also has no side effects. Central to this claim are recent findings that even getting an education may add as much as 10 years to your health. That is why National Geographic featured John de Rosen in its 1986 book The Incredible Machine, which discussed old age. De Rosen, an artist, continued to paint until the week he died at age 91. The book notes: Some scientists believe that retirement to a sedentary lifestyle initiates or aggravates medical problems, thus shortening life. According to a study of retired people, adults over 65 can learn a creative skill, like oil painting, as readily as younger students. So retiring from a job in a sense means retiring from life unless supplemented by some other (preferably new) activity.

Investigating mental processes and brain efficiency

With their new imaging machines, scientists literally look into the brain and photograph the paths of mental processing to learn how the brain handles information. Each of the 100 billion neurons has dendrites (receptors), a central processor, and a cable to send the messages to the next neuron. Some years ago, scientists thought that these physical aspects were fixed at birth. Then Marion Diamond, a pioneer brain researcher who dissected Einstein’s brain, published Enriching Heredity. In it, she claimed to have found that the key areas of Einstein’s brain were very rich in dendrites due to the increased usage, and thus established that the brain is not fixed by heredity.

Another aspect of brainpower is efficiency. Dr. Richard Haier, a professor of psychology at the University of California, Irvine School of Medicine, used PET (positron emission tomography) scan images of brain metabolism to indicate mental efficiency. Newsweek (29 February 1988) reported his finding that smarter brains use less energy. Wired (May 1994) introduced to the general public his first works using PET to analyze the brain changes of Tetris players. In this article, he revealed the importance of neural efficiency. In other words, give a smart brain a hard cognitive task, like Tetris, and it will quickly learn to solve it using less of the brain and less rigorously. Less efficient brains seem to have difficulty localizing the task to the most appropriate processing centers. Therefore, there is wasted brain energy and needless redundancy (noise) in neural-net processing activity.

Newsweek (27 March 1988) featured Haier’s PET scans of SAT (Scholastic Aptitude Test) takers. The outcome seemed to differentiate be-tween sexes. Smart men who scored above 700 on the SAT math section worked their brains harder (less efficiently) than smart women. The PET images reveal how efficiently the brain works when processing a cognitive task. Therefore, before and after PET images may show how smart the brain, or neural-cognitive system, is as a function of how fast it learned how to minimize extraneous brain processing areas and focus energy on smaller, more productive areas.

We have been led to believe that we use very little of our brain. Ironically, the smarter the person is, the less of his or her brain seems to be involved in any particular task. It seems that dendrites use the shortest or most feasible path possible, and that the more numerous and longer the dendrites are, the more likely they are to have shorter paths between the nodes in the brain’s neural network. When the mind starts to process a task, it apparently engages a greater area of the brain to feel it out. However, the smarter brain-mind system will narrow in on the brain’s most appropriate processing area(s). Then, the rest of the brain is released to do something else, such as noisy chatter or just rest (which is rare). A less intelligent system might use more of the brain than is necessary. This may create a source of noise on the neural-net that distracts, disrupts, or derails the fast and efficient (consistent and accurate) data processing by the appropriate brain center(s).

Brain efficiency seems to be highly correlated with intelligence (or brainpower). Apparently, the less moving parts the less friction and noise! This would agree with certain research findings of meditators whose quieter and more alpha- and theta-dominant brains appear to be better at various cognitive and mental reflex tasks.

Conclusion

In conclusion, brainpower depends on many things: daily diet, physical and mental exercise, emotional state, stress, heredity and so on. It is not fixed or static, but has the ability to change and progress, so one can improve it by a combination of techniques that suit the individual. The discovery of new or improving existing techniques is open for further research in cognitive science.

Footnotes

1. http://serendip.brynmawr.edu/Mind/Descartes.html#Descartes.
2. The Words is available online at:www.sozler.com.tr/risnur/warning_word.htm.

References

• Centerpointe Institute, Holosync, http://www.trans4mind.com/holosync/.
• Diamond, Marion. Enriching Heredity: The Impact of the Environment on the Anatomy of the Brain. Free Press: 1988.
• Ornstein, R. and D. Sobel. Healthy Pleasures. Addison-Wesley, 1989.
• Poole, R. M. (ed.) The Incredible Machine. National Geographic Society: 1992.
• Report from the Biomedical Newsletter. Lippincott-Raven Publishers, n.d.
• Sahelian, Ray. Be Happier Starting Now: A Medical Doctor Explores the Fascinating Field of Happiness. Longevity Research Center: 1995. See Chapter 9.
• www.brain.com.

Currently, some religious scholars in the Islamic world denounce music. This paper analyzes the Islamic perspective on music and singing, and concludes that using music as a therapeutic agent in medicine is not forbidden.

Documented evidence shows the power of music can be tapped to heal the body, strengthen the mind, and unlock the creative spirit. Published papers and journal articles offer dramatic accounts of how doctors, musicians, and healthcare professionals use music to deal with everything from anxiety to cancer, high blood pressure, chronic pain, dyslexia, and even mental illness. During childbirth, music can relieve expectant mothers’ anxiety and help release endorphins, the body’s natural painkillers, and thereby dramatically decrease the need for anesthesia.

Exposure to sound, music, and other acoustical vibrations can have a lifelong effect on health, learning, and behavior, for such exposure stimulates learning and memory and strengthens one’s listening abilities. Music has been used as a treatment or cure from migraines to substance abuse.

One thousand years ago, Muslim physicians were in the forefront of medicine and used innovations and therapeutic techniques that are now considered modern. They treated mental illnesses by confining patients in asylums with twenty-first-century techniques of music therapy. In Fez, Morocco, an asylum for the mentally ill was built early in the eighth century, and asylums for the insane were built in Baghdad (705), Cairo (800), and Damascus and Aleppo (1270). In addition to baths and drugs, the mentally ill received kind and benevolent treatment, and were exposed to highly developed music-based therapy and occupational therapy. Special choirs and live bands were brought daily to present singing, musical, and comical performances to patients.

Malik al-Mansur Sayf al-Din Qalawun built the al-Mansuri hospital in Cairo (1284). Its most outstanding characteristic was that, just like today’s advanced hospitals, provisions were made to entertain patients with light music. Professional storytellers were appointed to narrate stories and jokes (radio, TV, and computers perform these functions today). People who called the faithful to prayer would sing religious songs in their melodious voices before the morning call to prayer; so that afflicted patients might forget their suffering. This hospital still renders such services today.

Medical benefits

Music therapy has been lost for more than 1,000 years in the Muslim world and in the West. In the last three decades or so, the West has shown tremendous interest in using music therapy to treat several diseases and ailments. No one knows exactly how music heals, but it looks like our brains are wired to respond to it.

Dr. Clive Robbins, a co-founder of the Nordoff-Robbins Center for Music Therapy at New York University in New York City, says: “There is something intrinsically musical about the brain’s neurological structure and the muscular function of the human organism. At a nonverbal level, music activates our minds, integrates our attention, and seems to help regulate some body functions.”(2) He has treated a child afflicted with cerebral palsy with music therapy in order to teach the child how to balance his body, coordinate his limbs’ movement, and communicate. It has made him motivated and intent.

The right song seems to work in more than one way-distracting us from pain, boosting one’s mood, reviving old memories, and even prompting the body to match its rhythms. Music has long been appreciated for its calming effects, but new research shows it also may have the power to restore and keep us healthy. Soothing sounds, from Tibetan chants to Beethoven symphonies, are being given scientific credit for preventing colds, easing labor pains, and even boosting anti-aging hormones. One study found that surgery patients who listened to comforting music recovered more quickly and felt less pain than those who did not. The International Journal of Arts Medicine reports that infants in intensive care units go home three days earlier, eat better, and gain more weight if the staff talks and sings to them.

Clinical studies and anecdotal evidence from music therapists suggest that the sound of music is soothing and comfortable. For example, music is credited with lowering cortisol, a stress hormone, as much as 25 percent; boosting endorphins, the body’s natural opiates or feel-good drugs; reducing pain after surgery and reducing the need for sedatives and pain relievers; making patients recover from surgery faster and with less pain; possibly preventing colds; raising blood levels of Immunoglobin A (immune system fighter) to a whopping 14.1 percent; and easing labor without drugs. It also seems to help premature infants in intensive care; stimulate the brain’s neural connections and promote children’s spatial ability and memory; lower blood pressure as much as 5 points, reduce heart rate, improve cardiac output, and relax muscle tension; and manage non-pharmacological pain and discomfort.

But these are not all of its benefits, for research shows that music also improves the mood and mobility of people with Parkinson’s, decreases nausea during chemotherapy, helps patients participate in medical treatment, decreases length of hospital stay, relieves anxiety and reduces stress, eases depression, enhances concentration and creativity, brings positive changes in mood and emotional states, increases awareness of self and environment, gives a sense of control over life through successful experiences, provides an outlet for expressing feelings, improves memory recall and thereby contributes to reminiscence and satisfaction with life. In addition, music therapy may allow for emotional intimacy with families and caregivers, relaxation for the entire family, and meaningful time spent together in a positive, creative way.

Exciting new research suggests that our brains respond to music almost as if it were medicine. Music may regulate some body functions, synchronize motor skills, stimulate mind and even make us smarter. According to Suzanne Hanser, D. Ed., a lecturer at Harvard Medical School’s Department of Social Medicine: “There is no set prescription or a particular piece of music that will make everyone feel better or more relax. What counts is musical taste, kinds of memories, feelings and associations a piece of music brings to mind. Some people relax to classical music, others like the Moody Blues. The key is to individualize your musical selections.”(3)

Depression

Research conducted at the Stanford University School of Medicine provides some interesting results. For one group of 20 people aged between 61 and 86, moods rose and depression fell when they listened to familiar music they selected, on their own or with the help of a music therapist, while practicing various stress-reduction techniques. A control group who missed out on the music and the exercises saw no improvement during the 8-week study period. It helps to perform gentle exercises, depending on one’s fitness level, while the music plays. Movements should be light and flowing. Breathe to the music, and gently come to rest when the music ends.

Insomnia

A study from the University of Louisville School of Nursing Research indicates that 24 out of 25 people with sleeping problems nod off more quickly, sleep longer, or get back to sleep more easily after listening to classical and New Age music. The music must be quiet and melodic, have a slow beat and few, if any, rhythmic accents. To be effective, one should skip the after-dinner coffee or tea and avoid telephone calls and TV after 9 p.m. Softer and quieter music should be played as bedtime approaches. Listen to the music in bed with a tape recorder or a CD player equipped with a silent on/off switch. One should lie quietly and take even, deep breaths.

Stress

Many studies have found that soothing melodies can ease anxiety and quiet both blood pressure and heart rate even under very stressful conditions. Everyday stress also responds to music. Select music that grabs your attention and, at the same time, relax your body so that all of your worries slip away. Slow music, like a love song sung by an accomplished singer or a calm instrumental piece may be perfect. If a slow tune gives your mind time to fret or obsess, switch to something livelier. Sit or lie down in a comfortable position and where you will not be disturbed. After a few minutes, perform a relaxation exercise.

Pain

One Yale University School of Medicine study found that people who listened to their favorite music while awake during a surgical procedure needed smaller amounts of sedatives and pain medication than those who did not. Music therapists and researchers say that physical discomfort from post-operative pain to chronic aches can be eased with flowing melodies and distracting rhythms. Dr. Alicia A. Clair, a board-certified music therapist and professor and director of music therapy at the University of Kansas in Lawrence, says that music can bring transitory relief from short-term and long-term pain and discomfort, such as arthritis and osteoporosis. Gentle and soothing stress-reducing music, which can relax and distract the mind, is helpful. Martha Burke, a board-certified music therapist in Durham, North Carolina, says: “Gently flowing music or music with a slow, steady pulse can help promote relaxation, which can then alter a patient’s perception of pain. Soothing music can lower the heart rate and breathing rate, leading to further relaxation, and reduces tension that comes with the pain. We know music is so incredibly complex–it has tempo, rhythm, melody, and harmony. And so it stimulates the brain in many ways at once.”(4)

Brain damage

Samuel Wong, a Harvard-trained physician based in New York City, plays musical instruments to help patients with brain damage (from strokes) and Alzheimer’s reconnect to the world. He is also music director of the Hong Kong Philharmonic and the Honolulu Symphony. “When brain damage (from stroke, Alzheimer’s, etc.) leaves a devastated mental landscape, music ‘builds a bridge’ that allows patients to reconnect with the outside world. The study of medicine has informed my performance of music, and my learning of music has deepened my role in healing,”(5) he says. In 1996, researchers at Colorado State University tried giving 10 stroke victims 30 minutes of rhythmic stimulation each day for three weeks. Compared with untreated patients, they showed significant improvements in their ability to walk steadily. People with Parkinson’s enjoyed similar benefits. Stroke victims and patients with Parkinson’s walked more steadily and with better balance and speed if they practiced while hearing a balanced metrical beat or a piece of music with a powerful, even beat. A musical beat from any genre seemed to provide a rhythmic cue, which has a powerful, organizing effect on the brain’s motor skills—it helps harmonize movement almost at once, according to researchers. Scottish researchers have found that a daily dose of music significantly brightens the moods of institutionalized stroke victims. When daily music therapy was administered for 12 weeks, the patients were less depressed and anxious, and more stable and sociable than other patients in the same building. Music therapy also has proved useful in managing Alzheimer’s and other neurological diseases.

Sounds of healing

Mitchell L. Gaynor, MD, director of medical oncology and integrative medicine at New York’s Strang Cancer Prevention Center (affiliated with the Cornell Medical Center), says: “More doctors are seeing a connection between harmonious sound and health. If we are around very harmonious people and harmonious vibrations and harmonious sounds, we begin to feel better. I have never found anything more powerful than sound and voice and music to begin to heal and transform every aspect of people’s lives. It can really change people’s lives.”(6) “We know that music is capable of enhancing the body’s immune function, lowering heart rate, lowering stress-related hormones like cortisol that raise our blood pressure and depress our immune systems. It also trims complications after heart attack, calms anxiety, slows breathing and increases production of endorphins, the body’s natural painkillers. Eighty percent of the stimuli that reach our brains come through our ears.” (7) “Even before birth, music makes a difference. Hearing is the first sense to develop, when the fetus is only 18 weeks old (Qur’an 32:9). We know that the unborn child hears for literally half the pregnancy and is affected profoundly by what it hears. Studies show that music by Mozart and Vivaldi actually can bring down fetal heart rate, calm brain waves, and reduce the baby’s kicking. Rock music, on the other hand, appeared to drive fetuses to distraction, greatly increasing kicking.”(8) “Our bodies are 70 percent water, and thus excellent conductors for sound and vibration. We do not hear just with our ears, but literally feel vibration’s sound with every cell in our body. Disharmony and noise, whether from traffic, the boss yelling at us about a deadline, or a jackhammer on the street can make us stressed, depressed, and pessimistic–all of which depress our immune systems. That is why disharmony can eventually lead to disease.”(9) “Our own voices are very underutilized healing tools. Singing is a great way to tap music’s healing power. If you are self-conscious, try chanting. Anyone can do it, and you can’t do it wrong. We are just seeing the tip of the iceberg as far as the incredible power of sound to affect every cell and every organ system in our bodies.”(10) The Qur’an says: He fashioned him in due proportion and breathed into him something of His spirit. And He gave you (the faculties of) hearing and sight and feeling (and understanding). Little thanks do you give! (32:9, 16:78, 67:23). Dr. Keith Moore, professor and chairman of the Department of Anatomy at the University of Toronto’s School of Medicine, writes in his most popular textbook on human embryology that the human embryo first gets the ears (hearing), then the eyes (sight), and next the brain (feeling and understanding or mental faculties) in that order, as mentioned in the above Qur’anic verses. On the other hand, very loud music with sounds louder than 90 decibels cause stress and ear damage. Pierce J. Howard, Ph.D., director of the Center for Applied Cognitive Studies in Charlotte, NC, says: “Very loud music creates an altered state of consciousness akin to an alcoholic or drug-induced stupor that can become addictive.”(11)

The Mozart effect

Don Campbell, a composer, music researcher and teacher, healer and the author of The Mozart Effect, learned that he had a potentially fatal blood clot in an artery just below his brain. He shrunk the blood clot from more than 1.5-inch length to one-eighth of an inch by humming quietly for three to four minutes at a time, up to seven times a day. He did this for three weeks before he went back for a second brain scan. In The Mozart Effect, he writes: “You know music can affect your mood: it can make you feel happy, enchanted, inspired, wistful, excited, empowered, comforted, and heroic. Particular sounds, tones and rhythms can strengthen the mind, unlock the creative spirit, and miraculously, even heal the body. Exposure to sound, music, and other forms of vibration, beginning in-utero, can have a life long effect on health, learning and behavior.”(12) In conclusion, one should listen to a piece of music that one finds inspirational and uplifting. Dr. Ahmed al-Kadi of Florida’s Akbar Clinic conducted research on the healing power of listening to Qur’anic recitations. There is an urgent need for conducting more research on music therapy by Muslim physicians in the West and in the Muslim world.

Footnotes

1. Cayce, Edgar, “Readings on Music: Healing.” 1944. A free handout distributed by ARE (Association for Research and Enlightenment, 215, 67th St., Virginia Beach, VA 23451)
2. Nordoff, Paul and Clive Robbins, Therapy in Music for Handicapped Children, London, Gollancz, 1992
3. Cromie, William J., “Treating ills with music, from Anxiety to Alzheimer’s from Pain to Parkinson’s.” Harvard University Gazette, 22 August 2002
4. Burke, M. & Thomas, K., “Use of Physioacoustic Therapy to Reduce Pain During Physical Therapy for Total Knee Replacement Patients Over Age 55,” in Music Vibration and Health, Wigram, T. & Dileo, Ch. (Ed.), Jeffrey Books, Cherry Hill, NJ, USA, 1997
5. Noonan, Peggy. “Take two tunes and call me in the morning” USA Weekend Magazine-Health. Dec. 19, 1999
6. Gaynor, M. L., Sounds of Healing: A Physician Reveals the Therapeutic Power of Sound, Voice, and Music. Broadway Books, 1999
7. Gaynor, quoted by Peggy Noonan, Ibid 8 Gaynor, quoted by Peggy Noonan, Ibid
8. Gaynor, Ibid
9. Gaynor, Ibid
10. Howard, P. J. The Owner’s Manual for the Brain: Everyday Applications from Mind-Brain Research. Bard Press, 1999
11. Campbell, D., The Mozart Effect: Tapping the Power of Music to Heal the Body, Strengthen the Mind, and Unlock the Creative Spirit. New York: Avon Books, 1997

References

• Alvin, J., Music Therapy. Basic Books, Inc. Publishers, New York. 1975.
• Campbell, D., The Mozart Effect: Tapping the Power of Music to Heal the Body, Strengthen the Mind, and Unlock the Creative Spirit. New York: Avon Books, 1997.
• Coleman, J. M. et al. “The Effects of the Male and Female Singing and Speaking Voices on Selected Physiological and Behavioral Measures on Premature Infants in the Intensive Care Unit.” Int. J. Arts Med. 5, no. 2 (1997): 4-11.
• Gaynor, M. L., Sounds of Healing: A Physician Reveals the Therapeutic Power of Sound, Voice, and Music. Broadway Books: 1999.
• Gerber, S., “The Sound of Healing. Every Culture in the World Has Used Sound and Music To Heal. Finally We Are Catching Up.” Vegetarian Times, 247 (March 1998): 68-74. Harrar, S., “Got Pain? Got the Blues? Try the MUSIC CURE.” Prevention 51, no. 18 (1995): 100.
• Howard, P. J. The Owner’s Manual for the Brain: Everyday Applications from Mind-Brain Research. Bard Press: 1999,
• Moore, K. L. and Persaud, T. V. N. The Developing Human: Clinically Oriented Embryology. Philadelphia: Saunders W. B. Co., 1998.
• Syed, I. B. “Medicine and Medical Education.” In Islamic Perspectives in Medicine, edited by S. Athar. Indianapolis: American Trust Publications, 1993, 45-56.

Perhaps Tanzanian president Nyerere (1968) was right when he defined development in the following terms: development of the people, roads, buildings, the increase of crop output and other things of this nature are not development; they are only tools of development. An increase in the number of school buildings only if these things can be sold, and money used for other things which improve health, comfort and understanding of the people. Every proposal must be judged by the criterion of whether it serves the purposes of development and the purpose of development is the people.(1)

The existing situation

The concept of development is indivisible from the characteristics of individuals living in a given society or culture, because their own attitudes, beliefs, prejudices, and values influence their actions while playing their respective roles. If the goal of development is people, we can no longer ignore their normative structure, value system, and indigenous culture.

Culture must be an integral part of development. Development cannot be patterned on an outside model. Culture is an all-embracing concept that includes all aspects of human life, a œcomplex whole, which includes knowledge, art, beliefs, morals, law, custom and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society.(2)

If we look at the western concept of development, the scene is quite unfavorable for the poor third world. Dogmas of societal development that have been developed by western theorists purport to provide a holistic approach to society. Solutions are global in nature, and therefore applicable to all societies irrespective of the unique indigenous norms and values that distinguish individual societies for each other. In the last few years, universalistic western norms and values have been introduced to “ rather enforced in “ the development process.

Indigenous norms and values cannot be reconciled with the spirit of capitalism, which is central to most Eurocentric development agencies. Imposing western norms that damage and often destroy indigenous values has come to be accepted as a primary necessity of western-style development, although this is not clear in the ongoing discourse. As long as an exploitative world economic system founded upon capitalism remains the dominant world economic ideology driving the first world’s relations with the third world, development cannot be pursued from the inside. One consequence of this is that cultural reconstruction conceals real diversities in society. One example is meeting the needs of the small elite to the exclusion of those of the broad majority. Since most of the planners in many third world countries belong to the comparatively affluent and higher occupational strata, they differ in training and education from the majority of the population. Given this reality, their ideas and concepts of development differ from those of ordinary people. The kind of education they receive is largely western-oriented, as many of them are trained in the first world’s universities and colleges.

Western-style development

Let’s briefly review some theoretical explanations concerning the western view of development.

The underlying thesis of modernization, the belief in a universal Eurocentric concept of truth and the primacy of instrumental reason, cannot be equated with a genuine respect for indigenous norms and values. It is fair to state that modernization has the most negative effects on traditional norms and values. In fact, today indigenous values are treated with even less respect than before, for they are believed to have lost their significance as the major stumbling point on the path to modernity. Talcott Parsons writes that adopting universal values and norms is a key to modernity and that the end-product is development.3 Max Weber based his work on the belief that as western society develops, more of its members act in ways guided by the principles of rationality and less by customs of tradition.4 He sees much of this distinction in terms of a fundamental contrast of ideas and values. In his view, the coming of the modern era represents the social birth of the individual as a relatively free agent not bound by rigid and unquestioning conformity to past tradition.

Therefore development, according to modernization theory, depends upon so-called traditional and primitive values being displaced by modern ones, and the view that substantial economic growth cannot occur without changes in, say, technology, the level of capital investment, and market demand. However, quite a bit of contrary evidence shows that such growth does not always require major alterations to value systems and social institutions. For example, Gusfield points out that the traditional religion of Islam has been reinforced by the diffusion of modern technology, particularly transport, which makes hajj a far more practicable proposition for many people who could never hope to make it otherwise.5 At the same time, Mair argues that because making hajj is an expensive proposition for most Muslims, they must exercise great care with household revenue and other economic growth-related activities to be able to afford it.6

Karl Marx’s philosophy paints a very negative view of indigenous value patterns’ function in the development process.7 Ironically, Marxism identified development as the modern western ideal.8 This is the theoretical background from which dependency theory emerges, a theory that is reluctant to allow the introduction of respect for indigenous thought into its philosophy. œThe traditional sector is seen as unproductive and as an obstruction to the development of an economy with its own independent dynamism.9

Some negative side-effects

What does today’s developed world (in western terms) look like? Social peace and harmony continue to be disrupted by such development.

Development, which used to be a means to an end, now has become an end in itself. It tends to increase the frustration, relative poverty, and feelings of deprivation among those who live in the third world. Media reinforces this view by projecting western-style development, now termed globalization, in such a way that third world people must die for it. The world is not becoming a global village, as widely proclaimed, but a cage in which the parrot of third world development is enthralled. The West, in its capacity as the parrot’s master, treats it and feeds it as it wishes (usually in the form of aid).

The aftereffects of such development models (e.g., free trade, deregulation, privatization, and structural adjustment) are destructive in nature. Mander and Barker write that millions of people are left homeless, landless, and hungry and, at the same time, lose their access to such basic public services as health and medical care, education, sanitation, and fresh water.10 A question arises here: Do these globalizing institutions know what they are doing, or do they just blindly follow a failed ideological model?

These institutions have an assignment: To remove all impediments to the free flow of global capital as it seeks to pry open the world’s last natural resource pools, markets, and cheap labor (and to keep it cheap). To suggest that they do all this to help the poor is highly cynical. Media, their most powerful weapon, acts like a mirage in the desert of the third world by making distant water (development and prosperity) appear quite near and thereby deluding the thirsty travelers of the poor countries.

Proposed solutions

How can indigenous norms and values run the process of development in a better way without enslaving themselves to Eurocentric models? First, traditional knowledge must not be considered inferior or irrational. Recently, a World Bank report concluded that the œeconomic gaps between developed and developing countries are due to knowledge disparities. Zakar and Ekins have strongly argued that traditional knowledge is not created any differently than modern western knowledge, for both have evolved through the process of experimentation and adaptation and, ultimately, meet the standards of scientific principles.11 Principle 22 of the 1992 Rio Declaration on Environment and Development states: œIndigenous people and their communities have a vital role in environmental management and development because of their knowledge and traditional practices. States should recognize and duly support their identity, culture and interests. And enable their effective participation in the achievement of sustainable development.12

Second, if we agree with the functionalist assumption that whatever exists in society exists due to its functional nature, let the third world people devise their own way to development. Our unique ability to consciously accumulate knowledge from practical experiences and pass it on to future generations distinguishes us from animals. Thus, just like the West incorporates some indigenous knowledge (e.g., a holistic approach to sustainable development) into its knowledge system, third world communities should be allowed to take the same approach to western technology.

Third, let the developing nations determine their own definition of what development is so that it will fit into the context in which they live. Indigenous culture and its traits must not be interrupted from outside, as is now the norm. The West indirectly (and sometimes directly) forces poor developing countries to accept its own cultural traits, for example, language (English a medium of instruction), sharing selective information, and technology (usually of inferior quality). Why should people in the third world allow themselves to be transformed into œliving machines deprived of emotions, feelings, beliefs, and attitudes, which is the ultimate goal, either intentionally of unintentionally, of industrialization and modernization?

Fourth, any technical solutions to a particular society’s problems should be put into its sociocultural context. For example, many developing countries rely largely on agriculture to increase their GNP. Thus, they must obtain the relevant technology and other imperatives necessary for farming. Sustainable development goals can be achieved by empowering local people through community participation. As Barr says: œIncrease the participation of indigenous people in the planning implementation and evaluation of projects affecting their future living conditions.13

And last, but certainly not least, the various problems plaguing third world societies, such as poverty, inequality, political and economic instability, and ethnic conflict, can be solved only through the approach of cultural relativism driven by the process of a genuine trickle-up approach of development.

Conclusion

As long as the unequal system of exchange exists between the first and third worlds, third world development will always take the form of first world charity, with the result that development always will be imposed and will never emerge naturally from within the third world society itself.

Footnotes

13 Ibid., 42.

Metaphors also play an important role in science. Cognitive scientists, who continue to research how language evolved and which tools the mind uses during this process, state that metaphors are widely used tools. Scientists use language, as well as graphs and equations, to explain their models. Therefore metaphors are essential in learning and teaching science. In this article, we will present a few examples of metaphorical thinking in science and how it guides science in new directions that could lead to breakthroughs. We will be concerned mainly with the machine metaphor that affected the way we picture the world.

A short history

Metaphor derives from the Greek verb methaphora (to transport or transfer). George Lakoff, professor of linguistics at the University of California”Berkeley, and philosopher Mark Johnson explain the essence of metaphor as understanding and experiencing one kind of thing in terms of another. We generally use analogies to make less familiar things appear in guises that are more familiar to us. For example, we try to picture time by associating it with a river. Chemists extend their knowledge of a poorly understood compound by finding similarities with familiar compounds. Biologists use biological mechanisms found in organisms to understand similar mechanisms in others. Luigi Galvani associated the transmission of nerve pulses to an electric current.

Metaphor can be defined as the mapping of a source domain onto a target domain. Throughout the history of science, water waves were used prototypically for understanding light waves. People tried to understand light (target domain) in terms of water waves (source domain). This mapping forced scientists to search for a medium”ether”that could propagate light waves, for water waves were propagated in water.

According to the English physicist Norman Campbell, every scientific theory requires the use of models to understand theoretical terms. For example, in order to comprehend the kinetic theory of gas, we must resort to an analogue model gas behaving as if it were composed of point particles randomly moving in a vessel. Metaphorical models help to improve the scientific imagination. But for scientists to take a model seriously, it must be expressible in terms of mathematical equations.

Sometimes, the symbolic representation of a mathematical relation can lead to a metaphor. For example, the space is time metaphor has an interpretation in molecular biology where millions of years (time) are encoded and contained in DNA (space). In addition, metaphors offer insight into mathematical phenomena. The basic example is the number line, which is the result of imagining numbers as points on a line.

The machine metaphor

From the seventeenth to the nineteenth centuries, the dominant metaphor was the machine metaphor: The world is a machine. This connection was made by Galileo (d. 1642), Descartes (d. 1650), Boyle (d. 1691), and Newton (d. 1727). They imagined the universe as a static, predictable machine. This worldview influenced our beliefs and psyche, as well as the way scientists, philosophers, and other intellectuals thought. Scientists started to think of everything in terms of a machine. Muscles were considered to be force-generating machines, nerves to be electronic machines, and photosynthesis to be a solar-powered machine. Lord Kelvin (d. 1907) characterized the universe as a galactic heat engine.

The machine metaphor led to reductionism in philosophy: If we wish to understand how a machine works, we look into its component parts. Descartes’ analytical method of reasoning is based on the assertion that complex phenomena can be understood by reducing them to simple phenomena. Biologists tried to understand living organisms, as well as bodily motions and functions, by reducing them to their constituents. More research was devoted to understanding the nature of genes. Physicist reduced gases’ properties to the motion of atoms or molecules. Locke (d. 1704) attempted to understand society by observing the behavior of individuals.

With the picture of a perfect world-machine, belief in a Creator became a logical necessity, since the machine implies an engineer. Even children know, as a part of their personal experience of reality, that a house implies a builder and a watch a watchmaker. As they study the more intricately complex nature of the human body or the ecology of a forest, it is highly unnatural to tell them to think of all these systems as chance productions of irrational processes.

Theologian William Paley (d. 1805) expressed this creationist view on page 98 of his Natural Theology as: There cannot be a design without a designer; contrivance without a contriver; order without choice; arrangement without a thing capable of arranging … Arrangement, disposition of parts, subserviency of means to an end, relation of instruments to use, imply the presence of intelligence and mind. This Cartesian philosophy connoted the idea that The Hand of God had set the machine in motion at the beginning of creation. As everything had been determined by God already, nothing could be the result of chance. This view is known as determinism.

The computer metaphor

The computer, the current dominant machine, has become the modern era’s dominant metaphor. Visionary physicist Edward Fredkin characterizes the universe as a cosmological computer. The universe appears as a network of a dynamic whole whose parts are essentially interrelated. Modern physicists do not consider the atom a basic building block; rather, it is a web of relations that includes human consciousness in an essential way. Modern biologists describe cells as distributive real-time computers. Making good use of the computer metaphor, they focus more on how neurons work together and how each cell interacts with its environment.

Sociologists study individuals and their social relationships. Psychologists and cognitive scientists use the analogy of a computer to understand the mind. Artificial intelligence is just one consequence of such modeling. The universe is no longer seen as a simple mechanical machine, but as a more complex high-tech computer system.

The computer metaphor supports the view of a dynamic universe more than Newton’s static universe. James Maxwell’s (d. 1879) electrodynamics, the second law of thermodynamics (entropy), and Darwin’s (d. 1882) theory of evolution all involve dynamic concepts. Entropy describes the evolution of inanimate matter and states that inanimate systems tend to go from order to disorder. Entropy is an increase in disorder became a root metaphor at the beginning of the nineteenth century.

Biologists describe evolution as a movement toward increasing order and complexity. Darwinian theory attributes biological complexity to the accumulation of mutations by natural selection. One factor that makes Darwinian theory a naturalistic philosophy more than an empirical science is its claims that all of these dynamic processes are a result of random chance. Natural selection is introduced as the mechanism that minimizes the effect of chance. According to Darwinism, probability governs the universe and there is no need for God.

There are probabilities in the quantum world as well. However, probability and uncertainty show the unpredictability of the outcomes of quantum measurements from a human perspective. This probabilistic vision of universe, contrary to Darwinian theory, deepened the consequences of the machine metaphor: God not only set the machine in motion eons ago, but is still governing the process of creation and changing the probability pattern.

Metaphors and paradigm shifts

According to Thomas Kuhn (d. 1996), metaphorical thinking becomes crucial at periods of scientific revolution and gives way to a paradigm shift. Distant analogies are probably the most useful in times of scientific revolution: Newton’s metaphor of an apple is a moon is of this kind. However, this metaphor became literal after it was understood that the same gravitational force that holds the apple to Earth is the same one that holds the moon in its orbit around Earth.

Kuhn’s paradigm shift and use of metaphors can best be seen in the history of exploring the atom. The atom was conceived first by Democritus (d. c. 370 BCE) as an impenetrable sphere. This analogy was used to explain the behavior of matter until the nineteenth century. Spherical analogy was discarded in favor of Ernest Rutherford’s (d. 1937) analogy between the solar system and the hydrogen atom.

The following interpretations followed the planetary model: The nucleus is more massive than the electron (just as the sun is more massive than the planet), the nucleus attracts the electron, this plus the mass relation causes the electron to revolve around the nucleus, and so on. Object descriptions are disregarded, for there is no attempt to match the nucleus with the sun in color, size, or temperature. Then, the atomic nucleus was analogized to a drop of water instead of to a body like the sun.

Now, in quantum mechanics, every particle is considered to be a probability wave, which is an abstract mathematical quantity. Scientists have not yet been able to put these waves into a metaphorical pictorial model, which makes them difficult to comprehend.

Metaphors in revealed texts

The following Qur’anic verses illustrate the use of metaphors in the Qur’an. Speaking of hypocrites who do not believe in God but nevertheless claim to believe, it states: Their parable is like the parable of one who kindled a fire, but when it had illumined all around him, God took away their light and left them in utter darkness”they do not see. Deaf, dumb (and) blind, so they will not turn back. Or like abundant rain from the cloud in which is utter darkness and thunder and lightning. They put their fingers into their ears because of the thunder peal, for fear of death, and God encompasses the unbelievers. The lightning almost takes away their sight. Whenever it shines on them they walk in it, and when it becomes dark to them they stand still. If God had willed, He would have taken away their hearing and their sight. God has power over all things. O people, serve your Lord, Who created you and those before you so that you may guard (against evil) (2:17-21).

Conclusion

Logic and mathematics are not enough to understand science. We need internal mental pictures to grasp new phenomena. When trying to understand unfamiliar phenomena, the mind thinks of them in metaphorical terms. This not only helps to explore new realms for scientific theories, but also can change the view we hold of the world.

References

• Behe, M. Intelligent Design Theory as a Tool for Analyzing Biomedical Systems. InterVarsity Press, 1999.
• Gentner, D., & Clement, C. (1988). Evidence for relational selectivity in the interpretation of analogy and metaphor. In G. H. Bower (Ed.), The psychology of learning and motivation: Advances in research and theory (Vol. 22, pp. 307-358). New York: Academic Press.
• Hesse, Mary. Models and Analogies in Science. University of Notre Dame Press: 1966.
• Belal A. Baaquie and Lai Choy Heng, Department of Physics, National University of Singapore Method and Anti-Method in the Sciences: Metaphors and Scientific Creativity. http://www.scholars.nus.edu.sg/natureslaw/methodology/anti_method/11.html
• Lakoff, G. and Johnson. Metaphors We Live By. University of Chicago Press, 1995.
• Morris, Henry, ed. Scientific Creationism. 2d ed. Word Publishing: 1974.
• Paley, William. Natural Theology; or, Evidences of the Existence and Attributes of the Deity. Online at: www.hti.umich.edu.

In this article, we will delve a little deeper into this magnificent miracle of God: the mathematics of nature.

FLOWERS:

For example, look at the pictures given below. For 1-petalled flowers, we offer white calla lilies; for 2-petalled flowers, we offer the very rare euphorbia; and for 3-petalled flowers trilliums, lilies, and irises.

<cellpadding=”15″ cellspacing=”15″>White Calla Lilly

Trilliums 

Did you ever wonder why 4-petalled flowers are so rare, and why everyone gets excited when they find a 4-leaf clover? The reason for this is because such flowers are very rare, for 4 is not a Fibonacci number. Some violets and bluets also have 4 petals.

Flowers with 5 petals are rather common. Among them are buttercups, wild roses, larkspurs, and columbines.

Examples of 8-petalled flowers are bloodroots and delphiniums. Examples of 13-petalled flowers are ragworts, corn marigolds, and cinerarias; those with 21 petals are daisies, asters, and chicories; and those with 34 petals are oxeye daisies, sunflowers, plantains, and pyrethrums.

Some families of daisies, such as the michaelmas daisies from the asteraceae family, have 55 and 89 petals.

Seed and flower heads

The echinacea purpura is a member of the daisy family native to the Illinois prairie. You can see in Figure 1 that the orange œpetals seem to form spirals curving both to the left and to the right. At the edge of the picture, if you count those spiraling to the right as you go outwards, you will notice that there are 55 spirals (a Fibonacci number). A little further toward the center, you can count 34 spirals (another Fibonacci number). If you count the spirals going the other way, you will see that the pair of numbers (counting the spirals curving toward the left and toward the right) are neighbors in the Fibonacci number series.

The same happens in many seeds and flower heads, among them sunflower seeds, daisies, pineapples, and pine cones. The reason for this is that such an arrangement packs the optimal number of seeds so that no matter how large the seed head is, the seeds are always packed uniformly at any stage. As they are the same size in any given area, there is no crowding in the center and no scarcity at the edges.

The spirals form a pattern: The œcurvier ones

appear near the center, while the flatter ones, which are more numerous, appear the further out you go. Thus the number of spirals we see in either direction differs according to the size of the flower’s head. On a large flower head, we see more spirals further out than we do near the center. The numbers of spirals in each direction are (almost always) neighboring Fibonacci numbers!

Let’s observe the spirals in these beautiful arts of the Infinite Artist. Consider the daisy. In the close-packed arrangement of tiny florets in the daisy blossom’s core, you can see the phenomenon in an almost two-dimensional form. As shown in Figure 2 there are 21 (a Fibonacci number) counterclockwise spirals and 34 (another Fibonacci number) logarithmic or equiangular spirals. In any daisy, the combination of counterclockwise and clockwise spirals generally consists of successive terms in the Fibonacci sequence.

The Math Behind It

Botanists have shown that plants grow from a single tiny group of cells right at the tip of any branch or twig belonging to a growing plant or tree. This tip is called the meristem. They grow in size after their formation, but new cells are formed only at such growing points. Cells further down the stem expand, and thus cause the growing point to rise. This means that a growing plant produces seeds at the flower’s center, and that those seeds then push the other seeds outward. Each seed settles into a location that turns out to have a specific constant angle of rotation relative to the previous seed. This constant rotation forms the spirals.

Consider the following case. There are n seeds in the arrangement. The nearest seed is seed 1, the next one is seed 2, and so on. If each seed has an area of 1, we have a total area of n and a circle with a radius of from the area formula (Area= ). Given this, the distance from the center to each seed is proportional to the square root of its seed number. If we call this angle alpha, the angle of seed k will be alpha*k. So we can easily describe the location of any seed in polar coordinates with and theta=k*alpha.

If we chose an angle of 0.15 (54A) the result will be far better. But we will be done again after 20 seeds, for 20*0.15=3, so after 3 complete turns we will be back on the same line. If we choose 0.48, which is a little bit better than 0.15, we will come back to the original line in 25 rotations.

Therefore, speaking logically, if we choose an irrational number we will not return to the original line. Of course we will get close to it, since every irrational number has some kind of rational approximation. In nature, we mostly observe the so-called golden ratio, an irrational (1.618 = ), which is the root of the equation , which is the limit of the ratio of two consecutive Fibonacci numbers.

With this angle of rotation, each seed is rotated approximately 1.618 revolutions from the previous seed (i.e., 0.618 revolutions or 0.618*360=222.5A). Notice how well distributed the seeds appear; for there is no clumping and very little wasted space. Although the pattern grows quite large, the distances between neighboring seeds appear to stay constant. In nature, you can see that plants grow their seeds simply where there is the most room.

It is really amazing that a single fixed angle can produce the optimal design no matter how large the plant becomes. For example, once a leaf’s angle is fixed, that leaf will œdo its best not to obscure the leaves below and œdo its best not to be obscured by any leaves that will grow above it. Similarly, once a seed is positioned on a seed head, the new seeds continue to push the older ones out in a straight line. However, it retains the seed head’s original angle. The seeds will always be packed uniformly on the seed head regardless of the head’s size. The principle that a single angle produces uniform packing no matter how much growth appears thereafter was proved mathematically only in 1993 by the French mathematicians Douady and Couder.

We frequently observe the golden ration in nature. In addition, we can try flowers and flowers, at least mathematically and as models.

Conclusion

We look at nature and see God’s creation. Most people just look at the general design, but others also study the seeds and their designs. As the Qur’an’s first verse tells us to œRead, in the sense of reading the signs in nature (the Qur’an was revealed to a largely illiterate people who had no significant body of written literature), we should understand this as an indication to analyze nature.

As a mathematician, I see that God has arranged everything in nature according to a mathematical order. He puts the maximum number of seeds in a minimum area. Bees use hexagons to store the maximum amount of honey in a minimal space. This fact is even mentioned in Qur’an 16:68: Your Lord revealed to the bee. Those who believe in evolution say that the picture is very clear. But there is a great art in front of us, one which is very well balanced and in perfect accord with mathematical harmony. This shows that there is no luck or chance in the world, and that everything is based on the rules that God has laid down for His creation.

Footnote

1. Fibonacci (Leonardo da Pisa, c1175-1250): The son of a Pisan merchant who also served as a customs officer in North Africa. He travelled widely in Barbary (Algeria) and was later sent on business trips to Egypt, Syria, Greece, Sicily and Provence. In 1200 he returned to Pisa and used the knowledge that he had gained on his travels to write Liber abaci, in which he introduced the Latin-speaking world to the decimal number system. Fibonacci numbers begin with 1,1 and the next term is the sum of the two previous terms. The first ones in the series are 1,1,2,3,5,8,13,21,34,55,89,

References

Mathematics Magazine 75:3 (June 2002): 163-73.

http://ccins.camosun.bc.ca/~jbritton/fibslide/jbfibslide.htm.

G. J. Mitchison, œPhyllotaxis and the Fibonacci Series, Science 1965, 270-75.

P. Stevens, Patterns in Nature (New York: Little Brown and Co.,1974).

Enron in only the poster boy for the type of greed running rampant in today’s multinational corporate world. Despite the rhetoric spilling over the airwaves of the world media, the truth cannot stay hidden for very long in this age of information. The world’s current level of violence is tied directly to the greed of such corporations and so-called leaders who care nothing for the people’s general welfare. They have sold their souls, as the cliché goes, joined hands with Satan, and are ready to ride off into the sunset.

I am not referring to any particular country, people or hemisphere. The greed that we see today exists among all races, religions, and nations. Granted, some may be guiltier than others, especially in light of current world events, but the evil force of greed does not discriminate. Satan has used greed to dupe many people, even Muslims. As Abdullah Yusuf Ali comments in his Qur’anic translation: What an evil choice he makes in committing treason against his own Benefactor (Allah) by going after the petty baubles of this world’s wealth of fleeting gains. How eloquent and true. Greed is nothing but selling our fate in the akhirah (the Hereafter) for this world’s temporary cheap thrills “ often at a tremendous expense to others.

Some facts you should know

So just how bad has it gotten? To what degree has greed enveloped the entire world? The following provides a shocking glimpse:

– In a statement by the Institute for Policy Studies, the group said that 497 billionaires registered a whopping collective wealth of 1.54 trillion dollars. This is way above the combined gross national products of all the nations of sub-Saharan Africa, which stands at only 929.3 billion dollars, or those of the oil-rich regions of the Middle East and North Africa 1.34 trillion dollars.1

– This collective wealth of the 497 is also greater than the combined incomes of the poorest half of humanity, says IPS.2

– Last week, the U.S. government announced that it was building the biggest-ever war machine. Military spending will rise to $379 billion, of which $50 billion will pay for its ˜war on terrorism.’3

– The wealth of the Forbes 400 richest Americans grew an average $1.44 billion each from 1997-2000, for an average daily increase in wealth of $1,920,000 per person ($240,000 per hour, or 46,602 times the U.S. minimum wage).4

– Funds in the hands of U.S. money managers grew from $1.9 trillion in 1980 to $17 trillion in 2000. While those funds were under the control of fiduciaries (half the funds are due to tax incentives), the pay gap between top executives and production workers in the 362 largest U.S. companies soared from 42:1 in 1980 to 475:1 in 1999.5

– The financial wealth of the top one percent of U.S. households now exceeds the combined household financial wealth of the bottom 95 percent.6

– The top fifth of U.S. households claims 49.2 percent of national income while the bottom fifth gets by on 3.6 percent.7

Of course, these all refer to the U.S. However, the U.S. and the western world are not alone in being the culprits of such distorted wealth distribution and inequality. For example,

– In Indonesia, 61.7 percent of the stock market’s value is held by that nation’s fifteen richest families. The comparable figure for the Philippines is 55.1 percent and 55.3 percent for Thailand.8

The impact of such greed is devastating for the rest of the world. Consider these facts:9

– Eighty countries have per capita incomes lower than a decade ago. Sixty countries have grown steadily poorer since 1980.

– In 1960, the income gap between the fifth of the world’s people living in the richest countries and the fifth in the poorest countries was 30:1. By 1990, the gap had widened to 60:1. By 1998, it had surged to 74:1.

– From 1995 to 1999, the world’s 200 wealthiest people doubled their net worth to $1,000 billion.

– Three billion people presently live on $2 or less per day, while 1.3 billion of those get by on $1 or less per day. With the global population expanding by 80 million each year, World Bank President James D. Wolfensohn cautions that unless we address the challenge of inclusion, 30 years hence we may have 5 billion people living on $2 or less per day.

– Two billion people suffer from malnutrition, including 55 million in industrial countries. Thus, in 3 decades, neoliberal-style globalization could create a world where 3.7 billion people suffer from malnutrition.

– The UNDP’s assessment: Development that perpetuates today’s inequalities is neither sustainable nor worth sustaining.

Although the above facts offer just a glimpse of the big picture, it is quite clear that the current policies of nations and their corporate entities are destructive, oppressive, and barriers to peace and justice. Such policies are making a select few rich beyond comprehension while the vast majority either barely survives or literally starves. This is our world’s hard and cold reality “ a reality that goes largely unchecked even among the educated masses of the developed world. Unfortunately, those same educated masses seem content to be brainwashed by a corporate-controlled media that tells them next to nothing about the world’s true condition. According to those who control information, people are on a need-to-know basis, and most of what is truly important the people simply do not need to know!

A worldwide epidemic

This is truly a worldwide epidemic, for it can be found in the third world as much as (if not more than) the developed world. It is a problem, however, that can be addressed only at its roots. While living in both the U.S. and Southeast Asia, I have learned that these problems all stem from the same place. The appearances (e.g., people, cultures, and religions) may be different, but ultimately everything that ails us has the same root causes, as mentioned in the Qur’an. Greed is greed, whether it is that of Enron or some other corrupt entity somewhere else. It may look different and the people may speak a different language, but the ailment is the same, because underlying it all are the same diseases of the heart. This is precisely why the Qur’an is for humanity “ because we have so many fundamentals in common with our fellow human beings.

All of us are capable of harboring some of these booby traps of the soul (e.g., greed, injustice, envy, and hatred). This is why we cannot point fingers at one nation, person, or corporation. The diseases of the heart are killers, and they are killing, starving, and oppressing millions of innocent people. Thus we have to deal with the sickness’ cause, not just its symptoms. More war and destruction may eliminate some of the culprits, but it certainly will not rid the world of the problem, which is, ultimately, sickened human hearts feeding on ignorance.

Globalization

We must be wise at such times and seek out wisdom, not just information as to how the world works. Globalization, which is actually just a fancy innocuous-sounding term for the westernization and materialization of the entire planet, is not in most people’s best interests. In fact, some less well-known world leaders have been brave enough to acknowledge this. Malaysian prime minister Dr. Mahathir Mohamed has consistently spoken out against the dangers of globalization in its current guise. He considers it to be nothing more than the developed nations leveraging its huge capital advantages in order to exploit developing and underdeveloped nations.

By lining the pockets of weak, corrupt government leaders, multinational corporations are free to wreak havoc on the people, economies, and lands of weaker nations. Dr. Mahathir has said that capital must be equalized first if the current form of globalization is to have a truly equalizing effect on all nations’ economies. Developing countries must be protected and their own economies nurtured until they can compete on an even playing field. However, this is far from the case today. Thus, globalization in its current form allows developed nations to strip developing nations of their resources while spreading a culture of consumerism and materialism through their huge multinational corporate media and advertising machines.

A Qur’anic perspective

To further understand greed from a Qur’anic perspective, we should understand why God banned usury: Those who devour usury will not stand, except as stands one whom the Evil One has driven to madness by his touch (2:275). When referring to this verse in his Tafsir al-Qur’an, Daryabi says: According to the socialist writers of today, money is lent by them who have abundance and returns to them to increase that abundance, the increase being the unpaid dues of labor, which is the only source of wealth “ the rich are thus made richer and the poor poorer, by every fresh act of taking interest, and the stability of social organism is disturbed. This analysis is perfectly consistent with the world economy today. Look around “ interest is everywhere, wealth is in the hands of a few, and the gap between rich and poor is growing ever wider. The result? The social organism is grossly disturbed.

This is why the Book is called Al-Qur’an al-Hakim (the wise Qur’an). It is a book full of wisdom. The evils of usury, greed, and their ugly companions are forces that have destroyed entire peoples throughout history. They are problems that humanity cannot shake, especially when we turn away from the Creator’s wisdom and guidance.

Our world’s current course, with the haves and the have nots growing apart at an exponential rate, cannot be sustained. Somewhere, somehow, and at some point there will be a monumental adjustment. A world economic system that is so unequal, so unjust, and so divisive cannot last for long. The powers-that-be currently controlling the world economy are deluded if they think that they can continue their corrupt policies while 95 percent of the world sits back and does nothing. Sooner or later, it will come to a crashing halt.

Islam provides a straightforward solution to this problem. Yet history has proven that until humanity can tackle the evil that lies within each person, we will never address the evils around us effectively. The solution is called fairness (justice) and cooperation. In our present capitalist-dominated world, such terms seem utopian. Unbridled competition is the name of the game and, moreover, there is no indication that this will change any time soon. Such over-competitiveness seeps into every aspect of life until entire societies distrust one another, become antisocial, and are completely dysfunctional from a social perspective. This is already the case in much of the western world.

Conclusion

Islam encourages people to come together, rely on one another, and commune. It already has the built-in, well-formulated systems to do it in an inclusive way one that is neither elitist nor harsh. Islam says that when people unite to build and do good works out of a desire to achieve goodness for all and His approval, they will earn His pleasure. When humanity is granted God’s succor, the sky is the limit in terms of what can be accomplished. The glorious history of Islamic civilization proves this.

This is how the Prophet erected the perfect society in seventh-century Madinah. In that society, people worked, lived, and worshipped together. Muslims, non-Muslims, and different peoples and tribes co-existed peacefully, all agreeing to live under one leader in a perfectly just system. That leader was a man who desired nothing for himself and only the best for his fellow believers and neighbors. Until those with envy and hatred in their hearts spoiled the peace, Madinah showed the world how belief in God, cooperation, and living for the common good are the keys to peaceful coexistence. This can never happen again until humanity is willing and able to fight the sicknesses lying deep within each person’s heart.

Footnotes

1. Steve Smith, World Billionaires Still Richer than Half of Humanity. Online at Islamonline.net, 2002.
2. Ibid., 2002
3. John Pilger, The Colder War, The Mirror 20 (30 January 2002).
4. Online at www.forbes.com.
5. Business Week (7 April 2000), 100.
6. Edward N. Wolff, Recent Trends in Wealth Ownership (paper for the Benefits and Mechanisms for Spreading Asset Ownership in the United States conference, New York University, December 10-12, 1998.)
7. Online at www.census.gov [Table H-2].
8. Stijn Claessens, Simeon Djankov, and Larry H. P. Lang, Who Controls East Asian Corporations? (Washington, DC: The World Bank, 1999).
9. Jeff Gates, Modern Fashion or Global Fascism, Tikkun: A Bi-Monthly Jewish Critique of Politics, Culture, and Society (Jan.-Feb. 2002).